SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 



1 6. Saffron is prepared from the deep orange-colored stigmas, 

 with a portion of the style, of the flowers of Crocus sativus (family 

 Irideae). The dried stigmas are nearly 3 cm long, dark red, and aro- 

 matic, about twenty thousand of them making a pound, or a grain 

 containing the stigmas and styles of nine flowers. It is a small plant 

 with a fleshy bulb-like corm and grassy leaves with a beautiful purple 

 flower blossoming in the autumn. As a dye, condiment, perfume, and 

 medicine, saffron has always been highly prized, and has played an 

 important part in the history of commerce. It has been cultivated in 

 western Asia from remote ages, so much so that it is unknown in a 

 wild state. It was always an expensive article, restricted mostly to the 

 use of kings and the upper classes, and therefore subject to adulteration 

 and substitutes. 1 In India it is adulterated with safflower (Carihamus 

 tinctorius} , which yields a coloring-agent of the same deep-orange color, 

 and in Oriental records these products are frequently confused. Still 

 greater confusion prevails between Crocus and Curcuma (a genus of 

 Zingiberaceae) , plants with perennial root-stocks, the dried tubers of 

 which yield the turmeric of commerce, largely used in the composition 

 of curry-powder and as a yellow dye. It appears also that the flowers 

 of Memecylon tinctorium were substituted for saffron as early as the 

 seventh century. The matter as a subject of historical research is there- 

 fore somewhat complex. 



Orientalists have added to the confusion of Orientals, chiefly being 

 led astray by the application of our botanical term Curcuma, which is 

 derived from an Oriental word originally relating to Crocus, but also 

 confounded by the Arabs with our Curcuma. It cannot be too strongly 

 emphasized that Sanskrit kunkuma strictly denotes Crocus sativus, 

 but never our Curcuma or turmeric (which is Sanskrit haridra)* and 



1 Pliny already knew that there is nothing so much adulterated as saffron 

 (adulteratur nihil aeque. xxi, 17, 31). E. WIEDEMANN (Sitzber. Phys.-med. 

 Soz. Erl., 1914, pp. 182, 197) has dealt with the adulteration of saffron from Arabic 

 sources. According to WATT (Commercial Products of India, p, 430), it is too 

 expensive to be extensively employed in India, but is in request at princely marriages, 

 and for the caste markings of the wealthy. 



2 This is not superfluous to add, in view of the wrong definition of kunkuma 

 given by EITEL (Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, p. 80). Sanskrit kdvera ("saffron") 

 and kaveri ("turmeric") do not present a confusion of names, as the two words 

 are derived from the name of the trading-place Kavera, Chaveris of Ptolemy and 

 Caber of Cosmas (see MACCRINDLE, Christian Topography of Cosmas, p. 367). 



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